Lift Up Your Hearts!

Although we couldn't fully appreciate it at the time, being neophytes who didn't know any better, we sang for several years in one of the best small church choirs ever.  It has been downhill since then, meaning no disrespect to our various choir directors nor to our fellow singers, but times and situations have changed and we have been mostly reduced to singing music that would never have enticed us into choir if we hadn't been already hooked.  But—O frabjous day!—this Lent we will be singing John Stainer's God So Loved the World!  I believe it has been a dozen years since we last had that privilege, quite long enough to make us not mind so much that we have neither the voices nor the rehearsal time to do it anything close to justice, and simply rejoice in being able to sing such music again.  Here, for your listening pleasure, especially those of you for whom this will bring back lovely memories, is a performance by the St. Paul's Cathedral Choir, which is a tad better even than our best.  :)

"What is VPK?" asks an article in our city's magazine.

Pre-math, pre-reading and social skills.  How do I teach my child all this information before she enters kindergarten?  Many parents used to ask themselves that precise question not too long ago.  However, for the past four years, concerned parents have decided to enroll their children in what is called VPK, or voluntary pre-kindergarten education....VPK is free [that is, tax-funded]...regardless of family income.

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Two of my favorite bloggers have written recently about the perils of allowing ourselves to be too busy.  (More)

The Gridlock Economy, by Michael Heller (Basic Books, New York, 2008)

Peter V.—who now keeps most of his insightful commentary behind the Facebook wall, so I can't provide a link—alerted me to The Gridlock Economy, which I touched on in the first Casting the Net.  Since then I obtained the book through Interlibrary Loan, and thanks to my Lenten disciplines, finished reading it last night.  Now I can get the library monkey off my back and return this long-overdue book.  (To be fair to them, the library has not been nagging me about it. But I was brought up to view an overdue library book as an unpaid debt, and my own conscience does quite enough nagging.  In maturity—I think once I passed the half-century mark—I came to realize that keeping a book a little longer and paying a fine was an acceptable strategy and more reasonable than returning it unfinished.  But I still imagine that I'm keeping hoards of folks in durance vile by limiting their access to the book.) (More)

I hope this doesn't violate blog etiquette, but I'm going to repeat a conversation an anonymous Canadian and I have been having over at East of Eden, on the post I mentioned in Casting the Net, Vol. 6.  I'm hoping she'll continue the discussion here, because (1) the blog owner is taking a break for Lent and I don't want to overwhelm her post while she is gone, and (2) I think several of my readers would enjoy the conversation and have something to contribute to it.  If the best part of overseas travel is being with family and friends, the second best is the opportunity to meet other points of view.  I'd welcome a Canadian viewpoint around here.

The original post is here, and I've excerpted below our conversation so far.  (More)

It's time once again to clean up my "blog about this" list with a shovel rather than a spoon.  Here are some treasures scooped up from various places. (More)

Sitting with us on our back porch, enjoying our porch swing, our neighbor announced that no one should be inside on a day like yesterday (low 54, high 82, sunny, breezy, low humidity).  When I'm working I'm afraid I hardly notice the weather, unless a breeze sweeps through the window and disturbs my papers.  But she was quite right.

We began the day with a trip to the Winter Park Farmer's Market.   Farmer's markets are not as much fun in Central Florida as I've experienced in other places:  for the most part, agriculture has moved too far away from us, and if you look carefully at that fresh-looking piece of fruit you just might discover that it was harvested in Guatemala.  Some so-called farmer's markets resemble a craft show with food vendors more than a place to find the ingredients for your next meal. (More)

RIP Paul Harvey.

As someone relatively new to the Liturgical Year, I have nothing authoritative to say about Lent, but I love this season.  As a penitential season it is much easier to celebrate than Advent, which gets entangled with the secular celebration of Christmas.  And Lenten disciplines have all the fun of New Year's resolutions but with a statute of limitations.

Why would anyone share something as personal as Lenten disciplines with the world?  Three reasons. (More)

As with most First Things articles, David B. Hart's 2004 essay Freedom and Decency is intellectual, dense, long, and not easy going.  But—again like most First Things articles—it is well worth the effort.  (Hat tip to John C. Wright.  Who says science fiction writers can't be deep thinkers?)  What earns the article its own post rather than a brief mention in my "Casting the Net" series is the following extraordinary paragraph, which leaps from the somewhat dry erudition with the shock of a striking panther.

I am not convinced that we are in any very meaningful sense in the midst of a “culture war”; I think it might at best be described as a fracas. I do not say that such a war would not be worth waging. Yet most of us have already unconsciously surrendered to the more insidious aspects of modernity long before we even contemplate drawing our swords from their scabbards and inspecting them for rust. This is not to say that there are no practical measures for those who wish in earnest for the battle to be joined: homeschooling or private “trivium” academies; the disposal or locking away of televisions; prohibitions on video games and popular music; Greek and Latin; great books; remote places; archaic enthusiasms. It is generally wise to seek to be separate, to be in the world but not of it, to be no more engaged with modernity than were the ancient Christians with the culture of pagan antiquity; and wise also to cultivate in our hearts a generous hatred toward the secular order, and a charitable contempt. Probably the most subversive and effective strategy we might undertake would be one of militant fecundity: abundant, relentless, exuberant, and defiant childbearing. Given the reluctance of modern men and women to be fruitful and multiply, it would not be difficult, surely, for the devout to accomplish — in no more than a generation or two — a demographic revolution. Such a course is quite radical, admittedly, and contrary to the spirit of the age, but that is rather the point, after all. It would mean often forgoing certain material advantages, and forfeiting a great deal of our leisure; it would often prove difficult to sustain a two-career family or to be certain of a lavish retirement. But if it is a war we want, we should not recoil from sacrifice.

Did you ever wonder where your Ash Wednesday ashes come from?  Traditionally they come from burning the branches from the previous year's Palm Sunday, but these days the ashes that mark your forehead on this first day of Lent might be from right here in Central Florida. Read about 84-year-old Ralph Higginbotham's family ash-making business in this Orlando Sentinel article, which also includes a good explanation of Ash Wednesday and Lent.

Under Higginbotham's direction, the family makes several hundred pounds of the smooth, black dust from sabal palms every year. He makes the ashes by slowly roasting palm trees in steel drums.

He uses no flammable liquids in the roasting and no pigments to darken the finished product.

A single 25-foot palm, cut and left to cure in the sun for two years, will yield about 5 pounds of ash. After grating and sifting, the ash goes off to suppliers in California, Illinois and Rhode Island, who sell it to churches and dioceses across the country.

Jon shared Controlling Our Food on Facebook, but as that leaves out most of my readers, I'll post it here.  I almost didn't, because whoever put it up on Google Video is some sort of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist.  That doesn't negate the importance of what this French documentary has to say, however, so in the spirit of "the wise man recognizes truth in the words of his enemies," I recommend taking the time to watch this video, because it raises some critical issues about the environment and the future of our food supply. (It's nearly two hours long, but it not content-dense, so you can do something else while listening or be liberal with the fast-forward button.)

Controlling Our Food is primarily about the Monsanto Corporation.  To bolster the claim that Monsanto will do anything to increase profits, including lie and cover up and put people at grave risk of illness and death, the first part of the documentary is old news about PCBs and dioxin and industrial/agricultural pollution.  True enough, but old, and overly long, so that even in two hours there is not enough time given to the main points. (More)

Jon provided the name; now all I have to do is figure out what "Classical Unschooling" is.  It could be confused with unschooling as it was practiced "in the good ol' days"—but for a great article on the "unschooling" label see Pat Farenga's post What's going on with unschooling?  (There's no permalink that I could find, so if you come to this post later you may have to search in his archives.)  What I mean for Classical Unschooling to be, however, is an approach to homeschooling—better yet, all of life—that combines the best of what I've gleaned from authors as divergent as John Holt and Susan Wise Bauer, a flexible plan that is low-stress yet high-expectation, creative yet disciplined, supportive yet challenging.

Liz at smithically schooled began the discussion, but it's a little hard to keep up with because if there's an an easy way to know when comments have been added there I can't find it.  (The Recent Comments feature is another reason I like LifeType on Lime Daley for this blog.)  It would be great if my highly intelligent and experienced blog readers would read and add to her discussion, which is why I'm making this post and sending you there.  I'll also post a comment here if I note that the discussion has progressed there (and hope others will do the same) so you can know more easily if there's been an update.

Andy B. posted a link to New Math on Facebook, and it tickled me so I'm passing it on.  Many are funny, some a little odd, one or two potentially offensive.  Here are a few that I liked:

And my absolute favorite, the one that inspired this post:

Very clever; I hope it was meant to be that way....

I briefly reviewed the wonderful Claude Moore Colonial Farm back in 2005.  It's time for an update, because there's a great article about the place and its people on Slate.  Don't miss the video, which I can't figure out how to imbed here since it's not YouTube or a similar site.